PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
Right name, wrong man: Knoxville veterinarian cant get off no-fly list :: 12/17/2015
Dr. Patrick Stephen Hackett is a veterinarian — not a terrorist.
Try explaining that in the airport security line.
Dr. Patrick Hackett shows the letter from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that clears him to travel by plane. Hackett has been on the federal no-fly list for eight years because another Patrick Hackett, an Irish Republican Army terrorist, shares the same name. Some information on the letter has been redacted. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL)
Hackett, a lifelong resident of the Knoxville-Oak Ridge area, was named Outstanding Practitioner of the Year in 1992 by the Tennessee Veterinary Medical Association. He serves as president of the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley.
He's on the no-fly list.
Hackett has never been arrested and never traveled to the Middle East or other centers of terrorist activity, but he found out more than a decade ago he's on the federal watch list because he shares the same name as notorious Irish Republican Army terrorist Patrick Joseph Hackett, who was jailed in the 1970s for planting bombs in Britain.
The difference should be easy to spot. The terrorist is missing an arm and a leg — blown off when a bomb exploded prematurely — while the Knoxville veterinarian has all his limbs intact.
"I don't know how I got on the list, and I don't know how to get off the list," Hackett said.
Since learning he was on the list, Hackett has been denied boarding on planes and even spent time in a foreign jail. He says that's why he worries about the recent proposal by President Barack Obama to prevent those on the Transportation Security Administration's no-fly list from purchasing guns.
Hackett found out he was on the no-fly list in 2004 when he accompanied his son, who was attending the Air Force Academy, to McGhee Tyson Airport. He asked for a pass to allow him to accompany his son to the gate.
"They said I couldn't go to the gate because I was on their list. They gave me a number to call," he said.
Hackett said he filled out, signed and mailed forms to the TSA to try to straighten the situation out. About a year and a half later, he received a letter from the TSA offering him a "letter of duress" that he could present whenever he was questioned.
When Hackett subsequently used the letter to travel, gate attendants would mark his boarding pass. He would then be subjected to thorough and sometimes invasive searches before being allowed to board.
TSA officials won't discuss Hackett's travel status.
"It's a secret list," said a TSA customer services representative, who wouldn't give his name.
About seven years ago Hackett and his wife vacationed in St. Martin in the Caribbean. They flew into the island without a problem. As the couple prepared to board the plane home, they were taken aside by security, supposedly because Hackett's baggage set off an alarm, questioned for hours and eventually taken to jail, where they were separated while the questioning continued.
"They told me, 'Even your own country won't let you fly,' " Hackett said.
Authorities forced Hackett and his wife to sign a form written in Dutch before releasing them. They were followed around the airport until they were able to board a plane the next day.
Hackett worries he could be denied his constitutional right to buy a gun without due process.
When he heard about the president's plan to prevent those on the no-fly list from buying guns, he sent an email to U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. asking for help.
A spokesman for Duncan's office said he didn't have any specific information on Hackett, but said when someone's name matches a person on the no-fly list, Duncan's office assists them in getting a redress number that allows travel.
"I would consider a gun ban for people on this list if I felt that it was limited to people who were truly terrorists," Duncan said in a statement. "Unfortunately, as the New York Times reported, the no-fly list has 'run amok' and is 'vastly overbroad.' Even the late (U.S. Sen.) Ted Kennedy ended up on a watch list in 2004. This effort to turn the no-fly list into a no-gun list is just a political gimmick that is being used by the far left to try to impose gun control on law-abiding Americans following (the recent mass shooting in) San Bernardino, (Calif.)."
